Gene therapy developer with U.S. operations in King of Prussia raises $148M in VC funding

Source, Philadelphia Business Journal, John George

Gyroscope Therapeutics, a British gene therapy company that has U.S. operations in King of Prussia, has raised $148 million in venture capital funding.

The five-year-old company has now raised about $265 million over three funding rounds since its inception.

Gyroscope’s Series C financing was led by Forbion’s Growth Opportunities Fund. Other investors are Sofinnova Investments, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Tetragon Financial Group Limited, an undisclosed healthcare focused fund, Fosun Pharma, Cambridge Innovation Capital and founding investor Syncona.

The five-year-old company plans to use the proceeds from the stock sale to advance the development of its lead gene therapy candidate, GT005, a potential treatment for geographic atrophy secondary to age-related macular degeneration.

Geographic atrophy is a vision-threatening disease that is a late stage of dry age-related macular degeneration.

Dry AMD represents 85 to 90% of all age-related macular degeneration cases and is a leading cause of permanent vision loss in people over the age of 50. There are currently no approved treatments for the diagnosis.

The funds will also be used to support the company’s other gene therapy candidates in its early-stage pipeline, and for its proprietary Orbit subretinal delivery system. The system is designed for precise delivery of gene therapies to the back of the eye.

“We created Gyroscope to develop gene therapies for some of the leading causes of blindness,” said Chris Hollowood, chief investment officer of Syncona and chairman of Gyroscope, in a statement. “Our continued investment is a reflection of the great progress this team has made towards delivering on that promise.”

Gyroscope CEO Khurem Farooq said the company recently received encouraging early-stage clinical trial data for GT005.

In December, Gyroscope entered into a sponsored research agreement with the University of Pennsylvania under which the company is working with researchers at the Penn Center for Advanced Retinal and Ocular Therapeutics to develop gene therapies for serious eye diseases that can lead to permanent vision loss.